Farewell to Jim Lange, TV host and longtime Bay Area DJ

Updated 3:04 am, Sunday, March 16, 2014

Popular DJ Jim Lange was in Bay Area radio before, after and even during his stint as TV host of "The Dating Game." He died of a heart attack on Feb. 25. He was 81 years old.

Popular DJ Jim Lange was in Bay Area radio before, after and even during his stint as TV host of "The Dating Game." He died of a heart attack on Feb. 25. He was 81 years old.

Photo: Ksfo

Farewell to Jim Lange, TV host and longtime Bay Area DJ

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In 1991, I did a profile of Jim Lange, the longtime DJ on KSFO and the original host of "The Dating Game" and other TV game shows. It was "The Dating Game" - where he introduced the batches of bachelors by booming, "And h-e-e-re they are!" - that would be his legacy, he said.

"It'll be on my tombstone," he said, revving up his built-for-broadcasting baritone: 'And h-e-e-re he is!' With an arrow pointing down."

Just days after Lange died of a heart attack on Feb. 25 at age 81, the New York Times published an obituary, closing by quoting his tombstone remark.

So, Lange was right.

Most of the stories about his career focused on "The Dating Game," which began on ABC in 1964 and which the affable Lange took into prime time the next year. The matchmaking game, often involving celebrities, became a hit and remains a pop culture icon of the early '60s. Between 1965 and 1974, Lange hosted 2,312 episodes.

But before, after and even during "The Dating Game," Lange, a native of St. Paul, Minn., was on Bay Area radio, beginning on KGO in 1958, around the time it was making an attempt at Top 40 as "K-Go!" In 1960, he switched to KSFO and joined a lineup, led by morning star Don Sherwood, that would dominate local radio for years. KSFO called itself "The World's Greatest Radio Station," and, sometimes, it was hard to argue. Lange was part of KSFO, off and on, through 1983.

Although Lange told me he felt "stigmatized" by his affiliation with the TV show, he was lucky, he said, that "in San Francisco, more people know me as the guy on the radio. But then, it's 'Oh, you worked with Don Sherwood.' "

Or they knew him as the guy who got the KSFO morning show whenever Sherwood left the station, in a huff or for another opportunity. And whenever the king of KSFO returned, Lange would be moved to afternoons. He swore he didn't mind. "I didn't get an ego blast at all." Besides, he was also working on TV, both before and after "The Dating Game." Soon after joining KSFO, he became an announcer on "The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show," broadcast nationally from San Francisco.

In 1974, after one of his departures from KSFO, KGO-TV hired him, and that's how he connected with his second wife, Nancy Fleming, who was Miss America in 1961 and had hosted a local TV show. The two were teamed to host "AM San Francisco." He was married at the time, but separating, and wound up marrying Fleming in 1978. (From their respective first marriages, they had five children.)

On the radio, Lange was the genial, good-guy flip side to the sardonic bad-boy Sherwood. But Lange built his own following; he was "Captain Showbiz" and his listeners made up his "Showbiz Army," with a rallying cry of "Yet-THIR!" Lange juggled radio and TV jobs, in San Francisco and L.A., including a long stint at KMPC in Hollywood from 1984 to 1990. But he and Fleming settled in Mill Valley (where they had lived before L.A.), and Lange wound up his broadcast career on "Magic 61" (KFRC) and KABL-FM, where he was known as "Gentleman Jim."

Fleming remembers their interview with a local magazine six years ago. "He was asked, 'How do you want to be remembered?' And he said, 'As a gentleman who did his best as a husband, father and performer,' and I thought, 'Yeah! You will be.' He was so loved."

In recent years, she said, Lange was diagnosed with a form of lymphoma, and although chemotherapy went well, he also had heart issues. He had a doctor's appointment on the day he died at home. "His face was at peace," Fleming said. Her husband was satisfied with his career. But, she added, "had the station (KABL) not disappeared (in 2005), he would never have stopped."

Lange's last public appearance was in October, when he accepted a "Milley Award" from the Mill Valley Art Commission." Celeste Perry, who hosted the event, said Lange "seemed a little embarrassed and surprised" by the honor, given for creative achievement. "It was like, 'I'm a DJ and a TV guy.' His speech was funny, self-deprecating and gracious. He was so honored."

Ratings: Have you heard? It's no longer the Arbitron ratings. That company was swallowed up by Nielsen, longtime giant of television audience measurements. I'll have more on the transition in the next Radio Waves. And, since it's been a while since we ran the numbers - ARBs or Nielsens - here are the top dozen stations for January. These are overall ratings, for all listeners, all days, dawn to midnight, with their share of the tuned-in audience: KCBS (5.3), KQED (5.2), KNBR (4.7), KMVQ ("Now") (4.5), KIOI ("Star 101.3") (4.1), KOIT (4), KBRG (3.9), KMEL (3.8), KISQ ("Kiss") (3.6), KYLD ("Wild") (3.5), KLLC ("Alice") (3.3) and KOSF (2.9).

Notes: KOIT enjoyed a big surge over the holidays with its all-Christmas music programming, notching 8.9 ... Nielsen is clustering classical KDFC's various signals together, boosting its most recent ratings to 2.5, tied with KSAN ("The Bone") for 13th place ... A bunch of stations are knotted at 2.2: KBLX, KFOG, KITS ("Live 105," up from 1.8), KRZZ ("Raza"), and KSFO.

That talk station's sister, former ratings kingpin KGO, is treading water at 2.1, in 20th place, just ahead of San Jose's KEZR ("Mix 106.5"), with a 2. While "Mix" is up from a 1.5, its South Bay rival KBAY is down from 2.6 (Happy Holidays!) to 1.7. (Call it a sibling rivalry; both stations are owned by NextMedia.) In between those two: KUFX ("The Fox"), so-so at 1.8. KGMZ ("The Game") had a 1.2, while talkers KKSF (1.0) and KNEW (0.8), along with KNBR's sister, "The Ticket" (0.8), don't have much to talk about.

Fog City: With the departure of Greg Gory, KFOG's morning show is regrouping. Station manager Bill Pugh, who'd teamed with Gory on the program, has reached into KFOG's strong DJ lineup and plucked Renee Richardsonto anchor the show.

Richardson, who began years ago as part of the Dave Moreymorning team, had been doing the mid-day show in recent months. To fill Richardson's spot, Pugh dipped into KFOG's past and hired Annalisa, who left the station in fall 2012 to take the morning shift on rival KUFX ("K-Fox"), replacing Greg Kihn. Annalisa had been a free agent since December.

Gory, who joined KFOG in 2012, is joining a morning show in Los Angeles, anchored by Woody, with whom he worked years ago at KITS ("Live 105"). {sbox}

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